Saturday Lunch ~ Homestyle chicken, pie and salads

My long-time friend from my
undergrad and early Orthodox days
who visited us this Saturday
had given me this lovely cookbook
for our wedding gift.
It was so wonderful to have her at our
wedding and I was so pleased to have her
be with me in the very last days
before I was married.

It is from where she lives now
and her writing inside the book cover
was an additional gift to me.
I remember when Mr. Husband and I
were newly home after our
honeymoon and we went
to our friend's house to get
our wedding gifts that they so graciously
brought home for us.
It included this lovely cookbook.
So... when I knew my friend was coming to see me
I really wanted to make something out of the cookbook
she gave me.
After much reading and paging through the myriad of
wonderful recipes,
I chose
fried chicken with cream gravy.

My friend ended up frying the chicken for us,
using coconut oil.
It was wonderful...
*
We talked about the early dinner parties I had in BC
that she was at and a pork roast recipe that
she had made back in 2003.
*
So for our meal we had:
homemade fried chicken with cream gravy,
basmati rice,

a spinach salad with golden raisins and chèvre
(a creamed goat cheese) with a balsamic and oil dressing,

a fruit salad with Valencia oranges, strawberries
and bananas
with a dressing of sour cream, 1 tbs honey
and 1 tbs orange juice (to taste)

It was really lovely.

I used my fiesta-ware dishes as
they seemed to be the perfect match for a
more southern home-style meal.
Of course when I mentioned this to them,
Mr. Husband was sure to tease me about being a
northerner! :)
So the dessert that we had was wonderful
and made the day before...
the recipe inspiration came from
FB discussions on cream and
this wonderful cookbook with it's
Fresh Strawberry Pie recipe
that I found with Mr. Husband
and a recent library book sale.

Cream cheese happened to be on sale,
I bought an inexpensive organic whipping cream
and on sale organic strawberries.

The cake stand was a special wedding gift.

So I added a lot more cream cheese,
bought a premade graham cracker crust
added a hint of sour cream and some powdered
sugar... beat the cream cheese, whipping cream
and smidgen of sour cream in my
mixer and added powered sugar until it had a
light sweetness to it.

I mashed strawberries in a pan until
it was very juicy, added the sugar and corn starch
after it was boiling, a bit at a time
and when it was thickened,
I let it cool for a long while.
The cream cheese mixture I put down
on the crust a bit on at a time so I did not
ruin the fragile crust,
then added a layer of fresh cut strawberries
and put it in the fridge while the
boiled strawberry mixture cooled on the stove top.
When the mixture was totally cooled,
I put it into on top of the pie.
Note: I actually made TWO pies
but did not double the boiled mixture or the sugar
in this mixture.
I doubled the cream cheese by quite a lot.
3 packages of 8 ounce packages of cream cheese,
plus the whipping cream (did by consistency,
once the cream cheese was a bit easier to mix and
was softened), with powdered sugar (maybe 1/4 cup,
did to taste) added over time.

 

It was very good.
Mr. Husband thankfully had two glass pie plates
and we put the left over pie and second pie
in an insulated bag with
ice packs and it traveled well to our far-away church!
It was loved by all there and
Mr. Husband told someone at our near-by church that
"I make great desserts." :)
*
And that was our meal!
A really lovely one that made enough that
Mr. Husband had it for Saturday dinner
as well.